The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1918
John Stuart Mill · en
1919. _Sex Disqualification Removal Act._—This Government Act
has already been sufficiently described. The wider and more
sweeping measure introduced by the Labour Party passed
all its stages in the House of Commons, notwithstanding
Government opposition.
1919. _The Intestate Moveable Succession (Scotland) Act_
enlarges a Scottish mother's rights of succession to the
intestate moveable estate of her children.
1919. _Nurses' Registration Act_, 1919.—Trained nurses without
the vote had been working for registration for thirty-two
years. The principle of registration was accepted by the
Government, and the Act embodying it carried into law the
year following the enfranchisement of women.
1919. _The Industrial Courts Act_ was improved by the
Government accepting the amendment of the Labour Party that
one or more members of these courts should be women.
It will be seen from the foregoing survey of the legislative activity
of Parliament in the eighteen years under review that they divide
themselves into two unequal portions, 1902-1914 and 1918-1919. The war
years are omitted for obvious reasons. In the first and longer period
of fifteen years we find five measures of varying importance—that is,
at the rate of one to every three years. By far the most important
of these measures are the Midwives Act, 1902, and the series of
Acts dealing with the qualifications of women for local government
elections; both of these were due to years of hard work—twelve in
one case, and fourteen in the other—of very active and efficient
women's societies. In the second, and far shorter, period, of less
than two years—February, 1918, to November, 1919—we find seven Acts of
value and importance slipping through Parliament without any trouble
at all; ministerial swords leaping from their scabbards to remove
impediments from the path of the free citizenship of women. This is the
"difference" the vote has made.
FOOTNOTES
[1] This pointed to the probable application of the Parliament Act to
the proposed Reform Bill.
[2] In view of the promise which had just been exacted of me not to
use violence towards the Chancellor, the presence of his wife and
daughter might have been explained on the hypothesis that in the event
of assault and battery on our part they could have flung their persons
between their husband and father and his assailants. But this possible
explanation of the presence of these ladies did not occur to me at the
time.
[3] Antisuffragists in the country had taken up the campaign of calumny
against us, and had spoken of suffragists as "purveyors of vile
literature," disseminators of "pestilential doctrines," and had used
other flowers of rhetoric of the same description.
[4] See correspondence in the _Morning Post_, January 14th to 21st,
1918.
[5] The Bill was named the Franchise and Registration Bill, not a Bill
to Amend the Representation of the People.